Archive | Dividend ETFs

Is a recession around the corner? Some analysts believe the key to that answer resides with transportation companies like Federal Express (FDX), Union Pacific (UNP) and Ryder (R). Specifically, if less and less unfinished goods are being moved to manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, then one might anticipate sluggish growth, or even economic contraction.
How might one [...] Continue Reading...

The 10-year Treasury note is the most recognizable, and most important, debt instrument in the world’s financial system. It is vital to foreign jurisdictions, banks and investors as a way to gain exposure to the U.S. dollar as well as interest payments backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. federal government. Stateside, [...] Continue Reading...

Historically, when the U.S. dollar surges, forward S&P 500 earnings plummet. In the same vein, the last two times that the world’s reserve currency skyrocketed, theÂ U.S. economy slipped into a recession.
Come on, Gary. Do you really think that we have already dipped into recession territory? No, I do not. Yet the idea that the Federal [...] Continue Reading...

Less than three months ago, analysts everywhere argued a case for economic acceleration. It was almost as if financial authorities big and small had held a convention at LEGOLAND in California to declare that, “Everything Is Awesome.”
Everything is not awesome. Jobless claims hit 10-month highs, factory orders have dropped for six consecutive months, consumer spending [...] Continue Reading...

When the NASDAQ Composite Index hit 5000 in March of 2000, jubilant investors celebrated the milestone. Shortly thereafter, however, scores of individuals lost their collective shirts. Many witnessed losses of 50%, 60% or 80% of their account values on names like Cisco, JDS Uniphase and Pets.com.
Back then, the euphoria was akin to unchecked greed. Today, [...] Continue Reading...

McKinsey & Company, a multinational consulting firm, recently compiled data on global debt and economic growth. The company determined that worldwide debt has reached nearly $200 trillion dollars, up from roughly $140 trillion at the time of the 2008 crisis. Gross world product grew approximately $15 trillion to $70 trillion in the same time frame.
In [...] Continue Reading...

February has been a terrible month for the U.S. economy, but a wonderful month for U.S. stocks. Translation? Investors do not believe that the Federal Reserve will raise overnight lending rates during an economic slowdown.
Just how abysmal have the data been so far? Personal spending, construction spending, factory orders, international trade, business inventories, wholesale inventories, [...] Continue Reading...

The cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio (a.k.a CAPE, P/E10, Shillerâ€™s P/E) evaluates the average inflation-adjusted earnings for the S&P 500 over the previous 10 years. The long-term CAPE average is 16.5. Todayâ€™s CAPE is north of 27. And despite numerous detractors on its predictive value, P/E10 led directly to a Nobel Prize for its creator, Robert Shiller.
With [...] Continue Reading...

The case for investing in riskier assets has often been described as a sensible quest for yield and/or capital appreciation in a world with ultra-low interest rates. That helps to explain why the S&P 500 has defied the odds with respect to corrective activity, garnering double-digit percentage gains in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Yet the preference [...] Continue Reading...

Presumably, the Great Recession ended in June of 2009. Three months earlier on March 9, the stock market anticipated the modest recovery that is still intact. In essence, stocks began to rally well in advance of the actual turnaround in the U.S. economy.
Similarly, the 10/09/2002-10/09/2007 bull market ended roughly three months before the start of [...] Continue Reading...